Page 383 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

350 Part 4 Contexts for Public Speaking

• Auditory numerical: Learning by hearing numbers.
• Visual numerical: Learning by seeing numbers.
• Audio-visual-kinesthetic combination: Learning by hearing, seeing, and doing
in combination.
• Individual: Learning when by oneself.
• Group: Learning in collaboration with other people.

• Oral expressive: Learning by telling others orally.
• Written expressive: Learning by writing.

At fi rst, such a long list of diverse learning styles may be intimidating. How can
one speech or even a series of speeches adapt to all of these different ways of
learning? Of course, you cannot be all things to all people. But teachers confront
this variety of learning styles every day. Many teachers use a combination of
methods—individual and group work, written and oral assignments, print and
visual materials—in an effort to adapt to the variety of learning styles in their
classrooms.
Rather than trying to guess which learning style is best understood by an
audience, it is better to use multiple channels and modes of learning, much
as we discussed in the preceding chapter. With this method, you are likely to
reach most of your audience members with something that suits their style of
learning. In any given audience, there are likely to be individual learners as
well as group learners, those who respond best to oral instruction and those who
need to read it, and so on. Using posters, overheads trans-
parencies, or Power Point™ slides are excellent ways to re-
inforce visually what we say orally. Distributing a handout
after, and only after, a speech can help visual learners
retain what was said. It helps to provide the audience with
an opportunity to use as many senses as possible to pro-
cess the message. If parts of the presentation can be seen,
heard, and even touched, odds increase that the message
will sink in.
One speech we heard, for example, was about us-
ing acupressure to relieve stress. By instructing the class
to press on certain points on their bodies, the speaker
allowed the audience to use their sense of touch to un-
derstand what was being said. Other speakers appeal to
the sense of taste. We frequently have international stu-
dents speak about a food unique to their culture and
bring samples for the audience to try. We have also seen
student speakers involve their audiences in a group ex-
ercise to better appreciate the subject on which they are
speaking. Specifi c examples include a speaker asking
fellow students to model the simple yoga poses he fi rst
demonstrated and a blind student talking in the dark for
part of her speech, so that sighted students might bet-
Notice how this student demonstrates the dif-
fi culty of driving while talking on a cell phone. ter appreciate what she experienced when listening to a
lecture.